Chip Shields was appointed to fill Margaret Carter’s Senate seat in 2009. He currently serves as Chair of the new Senate Committee on General Government, Consumer and Small Business Protection, in addition to being a member of the Education and Workforce Development Committee, the Health Care, Human Services and Rural Health Policy Committee, and the Legislative Audits and Information Management and Technology Committee.

Senator Shields started his tenure in the Oregon Legislature in 2005, being elected to hishis first term in the Oregon House of Representatives. In his positions on the House Committee on Education and the House Committee on Business, Labor, and Consumer Affairs, Shields successfully forced debate on adequate funding for schools and stopped attempts to repeal the voter-approved Minimum Wage. He also fought for affordable health care, living-wage jobs, affordable housing, public safety and a fairer criminal justice system.

Prior to being elected to the House of Representatives in 2004, Rep. Shields served as Executive Director of Better People, a non-profit, job placement and counseling program focused on helping people who had been in trouble with the law. Since its founding, Better People has helped hundreds find living wage jobs.

Senator Shields has been involved with:

• Working with the Oregon Center for Public Policy
• The Portland Mayor’s Gang Task Force
• Stand For Children
• The Coalition for a Livable Future
• Leading the 2002 fight to increase Oregon’s Minimum Wage, giving more than 100,000 low-wage Oregonians a cost-of-living increase each and every year

Senator Shields graduated from Portland State University with a Masters Degree in Social Work. He lives in Northeast Portland’s Piedmont Neighborhood with his wife Shelda Holmes, who is a public-health family nurse practitioner. They are proud parents of one young daughter.